Theater

Steppenwolf and GALA Hispanic Leaders Discuss 50 Years of New Works

Join leaders from Steppenwolf and GALA Hispanic for a video conversation and Q&A as they celebrate their 50th anniversaries and commitment to new and diverse theatrical works.

American Theatre·May 29, 2026·via American Theatre

Steppenwolf and GALA Hispanic Leaders Discuss 50 Years of New Works

Steppenwolf Theatre box office. (Photo by Kyle Flubacker)

Dramática

May 29, 2026 Gabriela Furtado Coutinho Leave a comment

Holding Down the Fort: Lessons from Steppenwolf’s New Work and GALA Hispanic’s History

A video convo and a Q&A with leaders of two storied companies celebrating 50 years and championing new works.

By Gabriela Furtado Coutinho

Flowers return, and green finds its way back: the return of warmer seasons reminds me that hope is a natural, cyclical fact of life. Indeed, in spite of industry-wide conversations around contraction and conflict, there is still hope, and today on Dramática the spotlight shines on two companies marking half a century of constant renewal and cutting-edge work.

In Chicago, there are still places where playwrights are encouraged to take bold risks. Steppenwolf Theatre Company ’s latest world premiere, Windfall , offers one such example. The in-the-round production abounds in audience interaction, song, movement, lyricism, humor, shifting genres, biblical and literary references, and rarely staged conversations around money, power, grief, and principle. Playing through May 31, Windfall feels like a testament to the transcendent alchemy that’s possible when a great playwright is afforded the time, space, and people to reckon with difficult topics.

I had the chance to hear more about how Steppenwolf’s ensemble method and the unique nature of this particular development process gave flight to Windfall , in a conversation with ensemble playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney, co-artistic director and actor Glenn Davis, director of new play development Jonathan L. Green, and literary manager and casting associate Bryar Barborka. The video is available both here (on Theatre Communications Group’s YouTube ) and on American Theatre ’s Facebook .

Meanwhile in Washington, D.C., there’s still a place where you can hear laughter in Spanish without fear : GALA Hispanic Theatre , a beacon of belonging. Its Spanish-driven, multigenerational, often new, sometimes musical, and always provocative work is only expanding with growing audiences, who feel more like neighbors than patrons.

Artistic director and playwright Gustavo Ott sat down with me last month to discuss the company’s community-centered foundation and what will inspire its future. The interview has been translated and edited for length and clarity.

GABRIELA FURTADO COUTINHO: Could you tell us about the founding and early days of GALA Hispanic Theatre?

GUSTAVO OTT: GALA was founded in 1976. It was the idea of Hugo Medrano, an Argentinian actor who was living in Spain. He came to Washington, D.C., for a tour and stayed when he fell in love with Rebecca Read. They said, “This community needs a theatre that produces in Spanish.” In that time the community here, even though it was big, wasn’t considered relevant. Hugo, being from Argentina and escaping dictatorship, had this idea that came from Brazil and inspired by Teatro do Oprimido : that the group is a society, and you have to treat the group as you would like to treat the country; your dream of a country starts with your family and your group of people. He started with four or five artists, and I think that theory of family and groups helped them. They were edgy, lived there as a family, grew as a family, and had three kids. Everybody started treating the project as their own.

Then they changed venues and started working in a Catholic school in Mount Pleasant, which is a very important area politically. Mount Pleasant was the center of riots in 1991 , and GALA was at the center of everything. It was very political, and I was seduced by what they did. Then came the move to the big venue in Columbia Heights. It’s a very beautiful theatre, built inside a very old building, a former jazz concert hall from the ’20s. I sit down there in one of the seats and look at the 101-year-old ceiling, and I start thinking about how many times this ceiling has witnessed problems like the ones I have. Most of the time, I find the solutions in the old ways more than the new. I joke about the ceiling talking to me.

The last work of yours I got to see was Las 22+ Bodas de Hugo Múltiple / The 22+ Weddings of Hugo at Encuentro in Los Angeles. The play’s themes of family, home, and refuge feel intertwined with the company’s DNA.

That play first opened in 2023. Even though the form was comedy, many people were crying during the performance. Less than a year later, we were all feeling like we were in the house of Hugo—not protected anymore. Now we at GALA are that house, the house of Hugo, trying to protect the people who come to us. We don’t know when we’re going to be visited again; we know we have a target on our backs because we are a Hispanic theatre. Just the idea of speaking Spanish and producing in Spanish is not just a political statement; it’s a risk. We’re doing it, and our audiences are very proud. Every time we open, they feel that they are fighting back.

It’s such a cathartic relief to keep on, with the focus on language. I’d love to know more about your artistic career path as well.

I am a writer, and I’m excited about this idea of writers becoming administrators. As you know sometimes, we just write in this tower, away. But I’ve always been an administrator. I started in Caracas in Teatro San Martín , which is a cultural center in a very poor area of the city. We didn’t charge people to come into the theatre. They just came in. It was very funny, because the people would return to every performance, so after the fifth, they knew las letras y decían los parlamentos antes de los actores. They’d say the lines, and they’d warn actors, Watch out! Cuidado, cuidado!

That’s rare in the U.S.—the visceral and vocal engagement with a piece.

And because it was free, they would attend all the shows, knew the text, and would speak the lines. It was a privilege. In a large space with 350 seats, the theatre would absolutely fill up. They didn’t know theatre at all. They thought it was a movie. Suddenly they’d see it’s live. That fueled me. I started being a better writer, because I was an administrator, and I was thinking about the audience, the other, not about myself. Then, when I came to Estados Unidos, I started to work as an administrator in Teatro Dallas . Then I came here to GALA. I began as a writer, and I’m a journalist by trade. As a journalist, I learned to listen to the other, to tell the story of another person. When I started as a playwright, I remember people would say, “You have to do this, and this is the way to play, and this is the format.” Now, it’s not that simple. America is still married to realism. But this is not the only way to do theatre. That makes me not only happy, but free. That’s my only possibility in life: to be free.

In times when Freedom feels elusive, I think the page, whether or not it gets published or produced or read, must remain a space of possibility. Especially at our Latine theatres.

That possibility that you’re talking about goes beyond different borders, and doesn’t have to be here in America. The real challenge is not to worry about that. I believe that the importance of Latino theatres in the United States extends far beyond the community itself. We have fewer rules and have a much more open attitude toward text, a focus on the literature. We see the literature within plays, not merely the spectacle. I’ve been told this, and it helped me, Gabriela: Hay un área de nuestro universo en el que está sola. There’s a place in the universe where you’re alone, and there’s nothing else, no theatres, no people, no actors, ni nada. You are alone, and in this space where you’re alone, your work has pure literary value, por encima del escenario. It doesn’t matter that a work isn’t produced. And within that value, there are possibilities. Hay una relación entre desesperación y esperanza en el acto de escribir—there’s a relationship between desperation and hope in the act of writing. Once you accept that and say it has value— No, esto tiene calidad, la calidad que yo espero de mi trabajo —ya no importa nada más. Nothing else matters.

Could you please share more about the unique challenges and joys of GALA? I’m interested in how you let language lead, and how GALA differentiates itself from other theatres in your region.

Language is one of the main anchors for us. Language opens a universe that answers many questions. You can find this huge number of writers en Latinoamérica, but also Latino writers here that may not speak in Spanish but are writing in Spanish, or who write Latino stories many times in English but work with us on translations. Another anchor is where we are. This community around the theatre habla nuestro idioma, speaks our language, not just our language of Spanish, but they live in the same circumstances in which we live. Nosotros somos los mismos; we are the same. We go to the same supermarkets, eat the same food, dance to the same rhythm. We see each other in the bars, and they recognize us. GALA has this particularly in its community. We live and are the same as our community, and we have influence.

This also makes us face the possibility of growing; we need to grow more, physically. We need another venue for our youth program, Paso Nuevo , which is year-round. We’ve grown the youth audiences, so we increased the number of matinee performances, then suddenly our mainstage audiences grew too. We did research on it, and realized the kids are bringing their parents to the mainstage. Now we have this ticket offering, that if you come to a student matinee, you can bring your parents for free to the night show. We are different from the traditional American theatre, yet we are with them in the same regional movement.

As your anniversary season comes to a close, I’d love to hear what you’re proud of at this moment and what you’re hopeful for, when it comes to the growth of GALA and health of D.C. theatre.

With AGUARDIENTE (April 30-May 24), we are increasing our hiring because it’s a huge musical, and we’re increasing the number of matinee performances. It brings an overall economic impact in our area, because not only are we hiring people and giving them the possibility of work, but also to the restaurants and businesses in the area. That happened to me before when in Caracas in Teatro San Martín . That area wasn’t well-lit and was known for being dangerous when we started with the theatre. Suddenly, businesses rose up around it. GALA, similarly, is an economic force in Columbia Heights. And in Washington, D.C., we are very proud seeing people going to the theatre, not only to GALA. There are many projects here with more audiences than us. Woolly Mammoth is doing amazing, edgy work. And the Shakespeare Theatre Company . We’re very proud to be in Washington with these theatres and this audience. Let’s see what we can do now in dark times.

Gabriela Furtado Coutinho (she/ela/ella) is the digital editor of American Theatre , and a Chicago-based actor, playwright, and poet.